From the Rule for a new Brother

The Cloister - Aylesford Priory

I have been looking through some old notes and resources for a retreat with our novices and I came across this awesome piece of prose from another community - The Blessed Sacrament Fathers. A beautiful lesson in love ...

"Following Jesus does not mean slavishly copying his life. It means making his choice of life your own, starting from your own potential and in the place where you find yourself. It means living for the values for which Jesus lived and died. It means following the path he took, and seeing things as he saw them. If there is anything in which this life, this way, can be expressed, in which God has revealed himself most clearly, it is the reality of love. You are someone only in as far as you love, and only what has turned to love in your life will be preserved.

What love is you can learn from Jesus.

He is the one who has loved most. He will teach you to put the centre of yourself outside. For no man has greater love than he who lays down his life for his friends. He will also teach you to be unlimited space for others, invitation and openness: ‘Come to me all you who are weary and overburdened and I will give you rest.’

So be converted to love every day. Change all your energies, all your potential, into selfless gifts for the other person. Then you yourself will be changed from within, and through you God’s Kingdom will break into the world."